Drought is a slow and predictable natural disaster. We know it will happen again, and we know much of its effects are preventable if money is invested at the right time. So why do we wait for people to die from hunger induced by droughts before we start calling for emergency relief money? The UN recently launched …
n 1988, my family traveled from America to India to visit the homeland of my birth. At age 11, I vividly remember seeing beggars crippled by polio, crawling on the ground. I remember them staring at me. I, too, have polio, but I am able to walk with leg braces and crutches. I contracted polio as …
In January, my daughter celebrated her second birthday. She ran around our apartment with cake on her face and a joyful grin. Pushing around in my wheelchair, I could not catch her, and it hit me again that I cannot run. I cannot even pick her up off the ground if she falls down. I …
In my late twenties, I fell in love with Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s words. In part it was because I understood the world she was describing. I had not yet been to Nigeria, and knew nothing of Nsukka – the university town that features so prominently in so many of her books and stories. Still, that didn’t matter. …
The war against malaria has racked up some significant successes over the past half century. The testing of a new vaccine and the possibility of genetically modifying malaria-carrying mosquitoes to prevent them from reproducing have some people hoping we will soon be able to eliminate the disease. That’s likely still a long way off. It needn’t be, though, if …